henghhhhh?

So did you all like Game Change? Well Sen. John McCain simply did not care for it, despite having not seen it, from what he heard! Speaking to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, he reiterated the cold FACT that half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin was the best-qualified candidate for vice president on his team of mavericks, mostly because of her ass. But Chris Wallace pushed back! What would you say to campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, who babbled to anyone who’d listen that Palin “had trouble with the truth,” henghhhhh, John McCain? Henghhhhh? McCain then dropped a positively chilling, “I regret that he would make such a statement.” In other news, Steve Schmidt was found murdered in his bed last night by person or persons unknown.

Beverly Hills surgeon explains at home fix for crepey skin around the arms, legs, and stomach.

But even more important to McCain than defending Sarah Palin’s honor is, naturally, defending his own. McCain had issues with being portrayed as having a salty mouth! And guess what! He denied it! “I don’t use coarse language very often,” he sniffed, right before snarling offstage at his wife, Cindy, calling her a trollop and a cunt.

For what it’s worth, regarding Game Change, your editrix found Julianne Moore’s depiction of Palin completely overrated and the worst part of the film; it was a Church Lady stick-up-ass persona totally lacking Sarah’s earthy sensuality and Burger King appetites. While your mileage may vary, Palin is a woman men respond to, as seen here:

Hey, the man crashed TWO planes, and took out part of one aircraft carrier.

He was better than the entire North Vietnamese air force!

BerkeleyBear

Outstanding would be a much better descriptor for both – as in, he had an outstandingly poor record as a cadet and pilot, and Sarah had the most outstanding curves of any of the potential VP picks (Jowly Joe just can't fill out a swimsuit anymore).

NewtsChicknNeck

no.no.no. tom cruise was maverick. and the best fighter pilot in the navy. and gay. wait, duke cunningham was really an adviser to that fucking movie? oh, of course he was.

PuckStopsHere

Dude, Kenny Fucking Powers was Maverick. They totally cleared that up at the funeral last night…

Come here a minute

There is nobody better qualified to make John McCain look like a policy wonk by comparison.

BerkeleyBear

Yeah, her babbling does make you appreciate that "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran" is a nearly coherent (if completely deranged) message.

OneDollarJuana

PTSD. Post Traumatic Sarah Delusion.

Buzz Feedback

"Mean old Wonkett"

Callyson

"John McCain Stares on Sarah Palin's Butt"
He has a functioning dick still? Who knew?

FNMA

They have medication for that now. And it's covered by insurance!

DaRooster

Could have just been wishing he did…

Tundra Grifter

Callyson:

Even if he can't still cut the mustard, he can still lick the jar.

ttommyunger

Bionic dick, no doubt. "We have the technology, he haz teh moneez!"

freakishlywrong

In other news, Steve Schmidt was found murdered in his bed last night by person or persons unknown.
Actually, his fate is even worse. He's on Mornin' Blow every fucking day.

You DO realize your entire political legacy will ignore McCain/Feingold, the fact you got screwed royally in the 2000 primaries and your entire career as a Senator and "maverick," and will focus on your choice for Veep in 2008.

Right?

I bring that up, cuz that would make me kill myself…not that I wish that on you, no sir! This is the kinder gentler Wonkette!

freakishlywrong

I thought the same thing. A shrill and strident mean-girl albatross wrapped round his entire career.

ttommyunger

Oh, I don't know. I still have fond memories of him groveling after getting caught with his hand in the Silverado S&L Cookie Jar.

Well, to be perfectly fair, by "better qualified", McCain might mean, "Sure, maybe we didn't vet her carefully enough, and it turned out that she was a stupid, unpredictable hilbilly, but trust me, when we vetted the male candidates, there were more rent boys in every story than you could shake a stick at! Of course, the biggest problem with rent boys is that they PREFER to have a stick shaken at them. Ahem. So, really, she WAS the best choice from the Republican Party."

But even more important to McCain than defending Sarah Palin’s honor is, naturally, defending his own.

How do you defend the non-existent? And we're talking about Sarah's; he has mortgaged his honor a few times… but he still has equity in it.

metamarcisf

At the very least, Palin deserves credit for putting the cunt back in country.

FNMA

Hank III libel!

SorosBot

She was the best qualified candidate to run against; Obama and Biden must still be thankful for the day McCain picked the idiot and doomed any chances he had of winning the election.

Dashboard_Jesus

In all fairness to Gramps he didn't have a snowballs chance in Yuma, AZ of winning in '08 after the 8 years of death & destruction of the Cheney administration, so $carah was kind of his "Hell Mary" pass and the grifter delivered, in spades! And then for the next 3 years the Snowbilly quit and grifted her way across 'Merka…the END!

elviouslyqueer

Amazing. I had no idea that quivering goiters could actually sprout lips and talk.

Blueb4sunrise

Band.
First CD.

LesBontemps

Might be mistaken for a spoken word thing. The Quivering Goiters Sprout Lips and Sing may be both more accurate and more terrifying.

proudgrampa

"quivering goiters"? I think I'm going to be ill.

SayItWithWookies

We forget that at the time, no Republican wanted the job. And Lindsey Graham, IIRC, told McCain that choosing Joe Lieberman would cause a mutiny amongst Republicans. If Sarah hadn't accepted the offer, John's next choice would've been a car salesman from Dallas who had once run for city council.

Dashboard Buddha

And he still would have been a better pick.

SoBeach

"If Sarah hadn't accepted the offer,…"

Yeah, like that was going to happen.

LesBontemps

If by "best" you mean "worst" and by "qualified" you mean "incompetent." Today is opposite day!

Sarah Palin was hand picked by Bloody Bill Kristol of FOX NEWS and the Weekly Standard. Kristol and his neocon cabal wanted another GW Bush in the White House, just in case their seventy something candidate, John McCain would win the election and then pass away.

On a cruise to Alaska, Kristol paid a visit to Palin and saw she was an empty vessel who could be manipulated to wage proxy wars for Israel and continue pushing their Project for a New American Century policy which basically meant waging war against Iran. That's why she was picked as VP. candidate

UnholyMoses

Beautiful and wholly accurate analysis.

**polite applause**

The role Billy Wrong About Everything All the Time Always Forever Kristol played in her being selected is the truly under-reported part of the whole abortion of a candidacy the McCain team ran.

It's actually quite chilling to think of the influence the PNAC crowd would've had if McCain had won …

ttommyunger

Bingo!

Nostrildamus

According to "Game Change" (the book), McCain's longstanding wish for Liebermann was nixed at the last minute, so they had like 3 days to do a VP search from scratch. An aide was desperately cruising the net for videos of female Republican officials and came up with Palin. She had youth, charisma and was hard Right – big wins for an old, crotchety, moderate desperately needing to stir the base for donations. SP aced the interview and they simply didn't have time to vet her properly. Kristol's starbursts had nothing to do with it.

fuflans

i've heard / read a slightly different take.

mccain wanted either liebermann or pawlenty and was putting up quite a fight. when the 'powers that be' nixed either (too reasonable, too moderate, too like jammikin), he threw a hissy fit and accepted SP in a fit of pique (and yes, she was 'found' on that kristol / alaskan cruise from hell – which i believe wonkette actually covered).

Earthy sensuality?! You're kidding, right? (I can't tell.)
The only problem with Julianne Moore is that she was WAY too beautiful to play Sarah.
I know Sarah's attractive, but c'mon!

KeepFnThatChicken

Sarah was attractive until I found out she was a pageant person. That made her fugly to me. Pageant people can be disturbingly horrible, inside and out.

anniegetyerfun

Hey, I'm a pageant person! My talent involved pingpong balls, and brought down the house every time.

What? Oh.

James Michael Curley

But did you every try it with raw eggs?

SorosBot

Remember how the morons thought just putting a woman on the ticket would cause all of Clinton's primary voters to jump ship and vote for the angry old conservative, because apparently having a vagina means you'll automatically vote for any other person with a vagina,even if she's a moron who is completely opposed to womens' rights? Good call there.

And I call bullshit on the denials of motherfucking swearing. Walnuts came from a Navy family (or perhaps THE Navy family) and there pretty much ain't no fucking asshole squid worth their fucking salt that can't fucking swear to peel the goddamn paint with their motherfucking swears.

BaldarTFlagass

I took a summer college course (Western Civilization Part One) about two months after I got out of the navy, having spent 3 years in the fleet; I was one of about 3 guys and 27 bored housewives in the class. Every Friday we would have a class discussion on some assigned reading (Plato, St Augustine, etc). About three weeks in I decided to put my oar in, and started out with something like "This fucking Epictetus guy, I don't quite fucking see where he gets off thinking that fucking Stoics/sages are immune to fucking misfortune just because they are so goddam virtuous" or something to that effect, before I realized where I was and wanted to crawl into the crack between the floor tiles.

That's nothing. I remember coming home from college for Thanksgiving, and at the table I said, "Please pass the fucking butter."

JerkCade

True quote from my nephew, who was 6 on the morning in question:

"Merry Fucking Christmas, everybody!"

and then went on to burst into tears when we all looked at him, mouths agape.

ttommyunger

True enough. The Army and Corps aren't bad tutors in that skill-set either. It's been forty years and I still practice the profane arts, and it is an art form when done right. I've had lousy profanity-laden ass chewings from such luminaries as Capt. Frank Libutti (who went on to retire from the Corps as a Lt. Gen) and wonderfully imaginative and colorful ones from salty Corporals who never made (or kept) a higher rank. I know, it's a crutch; but I fear I'm doomed to die a verbal cripple.

BaldarTFlagass

I'm sure I've said it here before, but one of my favorite bathroom graffittis ever is "Obscenity is the linguistic crutch of the illiterate, motherfucker."

ttommyunger

A keeper. And: a proper ass-chewing isn't authentic unless one can detect the unmistakable smell of Brimstone in the area.

I watched Game Change. My problem with it was that Schmidt and Nicole, and whomever that was that Jamie Sheridan was playing, was that from about midpoint in the show they all sort of gave each other looks. "OMG, what have we done?" "OMG, is she really this stupid?"

Because that bunch lacked the self awareness to realize that she was a bad pick until they lost. They picked her because she was female and more hard core conservative in some ways than McCain, looking to shake up the race and steal Obama's thunder. They got a stupid, mean woman who has no idea about team and supporting the top of the ticket. They got someone who was wholey unqualified to be vice president, let alone president. Schmidt and Wallace were advisors to the book and move and I thoroughly believe that they tried to cast themselves and their actions in the best possible light.

That, and it made for lazy storytelling. Palin does something. Schmidt/Wallace/other staffers grimace and look at each other. It's boring in a film after the first dozen or so times they do it.

Do you really think they didn't realize she was a bad pick until after the election? I don't see how that is even possible, after the 2 interviews and the Tina Fey thing and the bottomless stupidity she was reportedly displaying behind the scenes. Sure, they may have lied on TV during the campaign season, but they knew they had fucked up. Remember, they were leaking all kinds of crap fingering her for blame in the closing days before the vote, too.

Terry

I think they didn't CARE except as it specifically pertained to any bump she could cause in the polls. I also think their main concern with her was that they couldn't control her.

The stupidity canceled out the bump, and everyone from pundits to my sister-in-law was saying it would be dangerous for this idiot to be anywhere near the White House, months before the election, so they had to have known she would cost them votes.

Terry

Did you see the movie?

After she's announced as the VP candidate, almost every scene that Palin is in features her doing something idiotic or being catatonic. Yes, that's probably very, very true. Schmidt, Wallace, and Sheridan's character in each case turn to each other and grimace as if to say "OMG, can she be that stupid?" or "OMG, what have we done?".

My point is that they do that almost every darn scene. Bad movie making. What was the point of having the actors do the same thing over and over? To me, it seemed like Schmidt and Wallace, as advisors to the book and film, were trying to make themselves look better. That they tried sooooo hard and were so good at their jobs, and yet this putz was dumb and wouldn't follow their advice. There is likely a good bit of truth in that, except I'm not sure that either are geniuses.

It was frickin annoying in the movie. I sat there trying to guess when and where the grimace and knowing look would be in each scene.

fuflans

yeah and i remember stuff coming out well before the election about tensions between teams, about sarah being unteachable, etc.

and i'm pretty sure i read about those leaks here at a minimum.

though to be fair, terry's right about lazy storytelling.

for what it's worth, my bff said woody harrelson was the best thing in it.

Terry

Woody Harrelson was good, except for the grimacing. I forgot it WAS Woody Harrelson.

The best scene, most viscerally satisfying is when Schmidt/Harrelson tells Palin off right before the concession speech.

Ed Harris was fine, I guess. He looked the part, but he seemed to be inconsistent in whether or not to play McCain's shoulder stiffness. When he decided to do it, it really was obvious that the physical mannerism had been "turned on".

I also think they went easy on Palin, despite making her look stupid, provincial, and egotistical.

fuflans

ha! that's exactly what my bff said (the schmidt / palin scene). she said it was great.

hagajim

Maybe she was best qualified. I mean look at the GOP field.

BigSkullF*ckingDog

Exactly. Being the most qualified GOP VP candidate is kind of like being king of the re –
Nevermind.

eaglewon

Julianne did a wonderful job. Of course those on the right won't like it. But hey, nothing will change the fact that Palin is dumber'n a stick. She was very entertaining, attractive, folksy, but in the end, a scatterbrain. You just can't have that anywhere near the white house. Unfortunately for the GOP, Romney is only slightly better than Sarah.

SorosBot

Wait now; Palin was never attractive, not at all.

banana_bread

I don't know, I think Romney is plenty smart. He's also horrible with people, which is kind of problematic when you're running for President. Palin, on the other hand, is great with people but with the brains of a llama. Since we already had a llama-brained folksy Republican drive this country into the ground, I've gotta say I'd rather have Romney than Palin.

Of course, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. Obviously my vote is with Barry the Sensual Soul-Singing Socialist.

Terry

I agree. Romney is smart, definitely smarter than Palin. He's bad with people, as you say, and he also has the handicap of seeking the primary votes of insane people who are far, far to the right of his words and actions in the past.

Sarah actually has no ass to speak of, perhaps that's why Walnuts spent so much time grid-searching for something to leer at.

SaintRond

Walnuts caught a dose of spiritual clap from that wretched cunt and it's impervious to any treatment and now he gets to scrape before the shrieky one for life.

Terry

He certainly seems to have given up the idea of the Straight Talk Express. If he was talking straight, he'd admit that he and his staff made a giant mistake and apologize the the country.

not that Dewey

Where is that magnificent ape?

Guppy

It's occurred to me how long it's been since last we truly discussed things up Sarah Palin's ass.

neiltheblaze

Yes – and that's the caliber of judgment that lost him the election.

fartknocker

I thought the movie was OK, although Julianne Moore did cause my faithful house cat to have grand mal seizures. However, I think the best thing I learned is that the new HBO series "Luck" is pretty damn interesting. It's not as good as "The Wire" but I'm drawn to it.

proudgrampa

"Luck" is pretty cool. Hoffman does a great job of defining a character with a volcanic rage just beneath the surface. And the horse race cinematography is awesome.

Yep, best qualified! And Walnuts conveyed as much on national TV, a couple of days before the election, standing next to Tina Fey on SNL while she eviscerated his running mate! Kinda late 4 years later to try and put a fig leaf on that shit!

Beowoof

Still can't admit that he made the biggest fuck up ever in a US Presidential campaign. Nice.

GeorgiaBurning

That he learned at Canoe U- NEVER admit to a mistake in judgement if you can blame something else.

ttommyunger

One, I don't mind Walnuts staring. She has, in my opinion, excellent climbing gear. Two, judging from her reaction to his close-in comments, I'd say his breath on a good day would knock a buzzard off a gut-wagon.

Isyaignert

LOL "knock a buzzard off a gut-wagon" Wasn't that the late great George Carlin's line?

He seemed to have a strange look in his eyes as he spoke. Not so much like he was lying, more like he had been programmed to give those answers. Dare I say it, brainwashed.

Sassomatic

It's not often that one's gravely poor judgement walks around in fuck-me heels.

NewtsChicknNeck

a bunch of non-denial denials from the old man. at least he can still correctly do that.

it's "based on a book," "completely biased," with "unattributed quotes." never does he say it's wrong or even "inaccurate."

finally, is it just me or is chris wallace consistently a somewhat decent interviewer? granted, going after mccain still makes for good TV for wingnuts. it's easy to see why mccain and lieberman are buds. they're both shitbag whores who are despised by everyone else regardless of party affiliation.

ChessieNefercat

It's impressive how he sticks to this claim, considering the odds of a tragically short term in office, and surprise!, a Palin presidency is born!

Someone should tell him he's not in danger and can say what he really thinks as he is not the President. Oh wait, the one thing the Arctic Dunce has never quit is a grudge.

Steverino247

Dear John,

Within an hour of the announcement of your selection of Sarah Palin as your running mate, I received about ten phone calls from Republican friends. Each call went like this:

Hello?
Tell me about Obama.
Oh, hello (name of Republican friend).

Every political analyst in the country did a spit take when they heard the news. The guy on KNX 1070 in Los Angeles was almost speechless and then said it was either a brilliant move or a huge mistake and we'd all have to see how it turned out.

Well, we know how it turned out. The Republicans haven't had a decent candidate for President so far this century and that's a trend not likely to change anytime soon.

NewtsChicknNeck

Leave John Sidney McCain III alone goddammit!! No one knows what "qualifications" he was looking for. Now consider the list:
1. Tits? (Check…although same could be said for Newt or chrischristie.)
2. Bible-beater with tongue-speaking capabilities? (Check.)
3. Able to speak in coded racism? (Check-plus.)
4. Tits? (Check.)
5. Paper-thin resume and from some backwater, a/k/a a D.C. "outsider"? (Check.)
6. No interest in governing (or interested in governing very poorly)? (Check-plus.)
7. Tits? (Check.)
8. Does she have tits? (Check.)
9. Poorly educated gun nut who's anti-choice (preferably with a shit-pot of kids)? (Check.)
10. What about tits? Does she have them? (Check.)

As you can see she was perhaps the only person in the world to meet these qualifications and be employed as something more than a Denny's night manager or a preacher's wife.

BarackMyWorld

I wonder if Tim Pawlenty liked the movie, seeing as how he was presented as someone who was "ready to be president."